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POLITICO 44

The White House on Tuesday posted a three-minute video punching back at an old clip of President Barack Obama that was featured on the Drudge Report with the headline “Uncovered Video: Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will 'Eliminate' Private Insurance.”

The White House response features Linda Douglass, formerly an ABC News correspondent and now a White House official, showing Drudge’s homepage on the screen of her office computer.

Dan Pfeiffer, the White House deputy communications director, said: “We intend to use a lot of the grassroots viral Internet techniques from the campaign to beat back the campaign of misstatements and outright falsehoods about the president’s efforts to reform health insurance.”

The video begins: “Hi. I’m Linda Douglass. I’m the communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, and one of my jobs is to keep track of all the disinformation that’s out there about health-insurance reform. And there are a lot of very deceiving headlines out there right now, such as this one — take a look at this one. This one says, ‘Uncovered Video: Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will Eliminate PRIVATE Insurance.’

“Well, nothing can be farther from the truth. You know the people who always try to SCARE people whenever you try to bring them health-insurance reform are at it again. And they’re taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they’re cobbling them together to leave a VERY false impression. The truth is that the president has been talking to the American people a LOT about health-insurance reform and what is at stake for them.

“So what happens is that because he’s talking to the American people so much, there are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there — they simply cherry-pick and put it together, and make it sound like he’s saying something that he didn’t really say.”

The video the White House seeks to rebut, labeled “SHOCK UNCOVERED,” was linked by Andrew Breitbart on his video site, Breitbart.tv, after a site called Naked Emperor News brought it to his attention.

The clip is labeled, “SEIU Health Care Forum 3/24/07,” and shows Obama saying: “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be, potentially, some transition process: I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out.”

Readers' Comments (2080)

Minus The Abortion Clause, add a smidgen of 'Limits on Malpractice Lawsuits, Taylor The 'Public Option' so that "Everybody who works, Pays In On Some Sliding Scale" and i would even Vote For The Health Insurance Reform Bill... i'm a "Pay as we Go" Fiscal Conservative, duh?

Burned again by your own video clips. Kathleen Sebelius is on record saying single payer. We got it. It's called the truth. The Democratic party is used to lying and getting away with it. They are, well, in shock that people aren't believing it anymore. They hate insurance companies. They hate anything private they can't control. Anyone in the opposition is a terrorist. They've declared war on the American People. They took over the spending committees and the key banking committee in 2006. Result: higher spending, higher deficit, and a Fannie Mae out of control that almost toppled our banking system. Now they are fully in control and it's a spending nightmare. It's like what would happen if you put your two year old in charge.

“Well, nothing can be farther from the truth. You know the people who always try to SCARE people whenever you try to bring them health-insurance reform are at it again. And they’re taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they’re cobbling them together to leave a VERY false impression. The truth is that the president has been talking to the American people a LOT about health-insurance reform and what is at stake for them. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/s...

Let's see, it's on tape, in his own words and others are out there trying to scare people? This is another case of the arrogance of this administration and how they view the common American.

I love it. Would this be "out of context" like Sottomayer's "wise Latina" comment uttered 7 times? Maybe it's "out of context" like Obama's own words that the $787 billion stimulus bill was going to provide the economy with an "immediate jolt".

Obama should try just being honest. His elaborate strategies for convincing people of whatever he's trying to convince them of just come across as silly and very, very weak. And all the back-tracking on other issues has made him just plain untrustworthy. People are suspicious of him, and whether or not he wins on health care, his handling of it had been dismally amateurish and obvious.

So the White House produces a former media whore turned political hack who says don't believe what you see and hear on that video. It's an example of that old question, "Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"

So the White House produces a former media whore turned political hack who says don't believe what you see and hear on that video. It's an example of that Marxist joke (Groucho in this instance, not Karl), "Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Would Linda Douglass have us believe her or our own eyes and ears? Would she have us believe Obama today or Obama then, when he made the statements about a single-payer system? Was he telling the truth then or now? The Big Lie technique just isn't going to cut it in the age of video. Sort like when Hillary Clinton was taking fire while receiving those flowers in the Balkans.

In what way did Obama's reporter-now-turned-administration-spokeperson do ANYTHING to deny what Obama, in his own words, says on the videos? Whether the press keeps playing starry-eyed teenager to Obama will determine whether the public's disillusionment with Obama punches through...

Drudge links to videos and stories. He isn't a writer. He isn't editorializing. How hilarious that this is threatening. But after decades of a Democratic political philosophy that grew up under a MEDIA COVER, it might come as a shock. Someone might listen to the actual words being said.